Saturday, September 29, 2012

Road Trip Adventure Genesis

About a month ago I got the idea into my head that I wanted to make a lifestyle out of taking River on RV road trips.

It all started when my uncle died and I was entitled to an inheritance. My first thought was that I wanted to buy a small home on the beach that I could escape to when the Seattle winter wetness got to be too much to handle.

That idea was quickly scrapped for many reasons. One being that I wasn’t going to inherit enough money to be able to afford anything decent on the beach. Another was that I didn’t want to feel tied to the same beach year after year. And finally, there was the issue of getting River to the beach house, since he can’t fly.

So the next logical step was to rent beach houses. This solved the dilemma of repetition but not the transportation issue.

So my next leap of logic was to buy a car and stay in hotels. But finding dog-friendly hotels across the country seemed like a great big exercise in optimism. Not to mention the cost of hoteling. And then the question arose, “Where do I eat?” Do I go to restaurants, leaving River in the car or hotel room? That sort of destroys the “Boy and His Dog” fantasy I was intending to live.

So, that’s when I thought I should buy a trailer and pull it with a truck. So I was looking into buying trucks and trailers, and that search led me to looking at motor homes and RVs.

The idea is something that I had wanted to do since I was a kid. I’ve always pictured myself driving the US, coast to coast in my motor home. So now I had the picture again, but this time with River in the passenger seat.

The choices regarding purchases of RVs were staggering. I had no idea what I was getting into, or how to choose between a class C motor home, a fifth wheel, an Airstream, a Winnebago, an cab-over camper shell, etc.

After tossing the idea around for weeks, I came to the conclusion that I should rent each type of vehicle for a test drive out on the road before making any decisions on purchasing. And I also may find that it makes more sense just to rent every time we wanted to do a trip.

So that’s where I stand now:

For my first experiment, I’ve reserved an MTR Freedom Elite S 27ft Class C motor home for a week. So far, the cost is about $800. There will be some further expenses because I’m renting a convenience kit for about $80 which will include all the kitchen utensils, bathroom and bedroom linens and accessories and batteries and hoses and whatnot. There will also be an added expense of about $190 to rent a car to get us and our luggage to the RV rental facility, which is about an hours drive from our house.

I know it seems ridiculous at first, but I didn’t come to this decision lightly. As with all of my decisions, I labored over it, weighing all of the options. I considered a car service, public transportation, hiring a friend for a lift, going to get the RV by myself and bringing it home to load up, or even buying a cheap car. So it turned out the the most logical option was to rent a cheap car and leave it parked at the RV rental site. The thing that I love about that option is that the car will be waiting for us. I didn’t want to have any issues with not having a ride home, or having to wait for a pick up.

Whew, I’m already getting the sense that this isn’t going to be a cheap hobby. But it will certainly be an interesting adventure.